Dive Brief:

• Target is spending a billion dollars to beef up its e-commerce, four years after taking back control of it from its former e-commerce partner Amazon, Fortune reports.

• The retailer has been testing ship-from-store, curbside pickup, and grocery delivery and is installing beacons in 50 stores, with an aim to get all stores outfitted by the holidays. The retailer has also shortened its delivery window for many items, putting that much pressure on its operations. 

• The company is investing heavily in technology — employing RFID tags in products for example— and streamlining its inventory and logistics fundamentals to smooth operations and avoid the kind of e-commerce snafus that brought down its website during its limited-edition Lilly Pulitzer launch.

Dive Insight:

Opening a tech hub in Silicon Valley, as so many retailers have done, is not the end-all and be-all of technology prowess for a retailer, and Target seems to acknowledge that. Its billion-dollar investment in technology is for the most part going to the nitty-gritty of tech.

That should help smooth out its omnichannel efforts, making it possible to employ stores as mini-warehouses while also ensuring that shoppers find what they’re looking for on store shelves.

The company’s complex supply chain needs to become more nimble if it’s to avoid the inventory issues that have plagued it, and that were a large part of its terrible stumble in Canada. The retailer abandoned its expansion there in large part due to horrendous logistics issues. But the problem is significant here too, something that could spell trouble as omnichannel takes off.